Haiphong city was famous for banh da cua for a very long time. Nowadays, this dish is still a specialty of this area.
One of the important parts in banh da cua is the red rice noodles. It is made from rice. The rice is well dried then soaked into the water in hours. The soaked rice was masticated and diluted to become a liquid. Then people girdle and bake it to make the red rice noodles.
Other important part is crabs. The crabs here are the fat ones that live in fields. If you want to have delicious soup, you should choose feminine crabs whose nutrition is copious.
The last but not least ingredient is bindweed. The bindweed used in banh da cua is often broken into half. The legend states that there are two areas that have the most delicious bindweed are Cau Tre and Dam Nghe on Do Son peninsula.
A bowl of banh da cua often has the red of chili and tomato, the green of bindweed, the yellow of crab. If you want to enjoy banh da cua’s taste, you should try the bowl like that. Now it’s up to people’s taste, they can add some more things, such as shrimp, pork-pie, fried quenelle forcemeat ball…
According to VietKings (Kyluc.vn)
